A Systematic Review of Music Therapy Practice and Outcomes with Acute Adult Psychiatric In-Patients

PMCID: PMC3732280This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Behavioural syndrome in a solitary predator is independent of body size and growth rate.

Models explaining behavioural syndromes often focus on state-dependency, linking behavioural variation to individual differences in other phenotypic features. Empirical studies are, however, rare. Here, we tested for a size and growth-dependent stable behavioural syndrome in the juvenile-stages of a solitary apex predator (pike, Esox lucius), shown as repeatable foraging behaviour across risk. Pike swimming activity, latency to prey attack, number of successful and unsuccessful prey attacks was measured during the presence/absence of visual contact with a competitor or predator. Foraging behaviour across risks was considered an appropriate indicator of boldness in this solitary predator where a trade-off between foraging behaviour and threat avoidance has been reported. Support was found for a behavioural syndrome, where the rank order differences in the foraging behaviour between individuals were maintained across time and risk situation. However, individual behaviour was independent of body size and growth in conditions of high food availability, showing no evidence to support the state-dependent personality hypothesis. The importance of a combination of spatial and temporal environmental variation for generating growth differences is highlighted

Identification of Novel Functional Inhibitors of Acid Sphingomyelinase

We describe a hitherto unknown feature for 27 small drug-like molecules, namely functional inhibition of acid sphingomyelinase (ASM). These entities named FIASMAs (Functional Inhibitors of Acid SphingoMyelinAse), therefore, can be potentially used to treat diseases associated with enhanced activity of ASM, such as Alzheimer's disease, major depression, radiation- and chemotherapy-induced apoptosis and endotoxic shock syndrome. Residual activity of ASM measured in the presence of 10 µM drug concentration shows a bimodal distribution; thus the tested drugs can be classified into two groups with lower and higher inhibitory activity. All FIASMAs share distinct physicochemical properties in showing lipophilic and weakly basic properties. Hierarchical clustering of Tanimoto coefficients revealed that FIASMAs occur among drugs of various chemical scaffolds. Moreover, FIASMAs more frequently violate Lipinski's Rule-of-Five than compounds without effect on ASM. Inhibition of ASM appears to be associated with good permeability across the blood-brain barrier. In the present investigation, we developed a novel structure-property-activity relationship by using a random forest-based binary classification learner. Virtual screening revealed that only six out of 768 (0.78%) compounds of natural products functionally inhibit ASM, whereas this inhibitory activity occurs in 135 out of 2028 (6.66%) drugs licensed for medical use in humans

Laser e luz pulsada de alta energia: indução e tratamento de reações alérgicas relacionadas a tatuagens Laser and intense pulsed light: induction and treatment of allergic reactions related to tattoos

Os autores apresentam dois casos de reações alérgicas relacionadas a tatuagens, em que o laser e a luz pulsada de alta energia tiveram papel fundamental na indução e no tratamento dessas reações. No primeiro, houve surgimento de lesão eczematosa no local do pigmento vermelho utilizado na tatuagem. Após várias tentativas terapêuticas, a luz pulsada de alta energia foi utilizada com sucesso na remoção do pigmento e desaparecimento dos sintomas. No segundo, os autores demonstram um caso de reação anafilática induzida pelo laser Nd:YAG de pulso longo.<br>The authors describe two cases of allergic reactions related to tattoos, in which laser and intense pulsed light had an important role in inducing and treating these allergic reactions. In the first case, the patient developed eczematous lesions at the site of the red pigment used in tattooing. After several unsuccessful therapeutic attempts, intense pulsed light was used. It successfully removed the red pigment and treated the allergy symptoms. In the second case, the authors describe a case of anaphylactic reaction precipitated by the long pulse Nd:YAD laser

Towards a solution for performance related confounds: frontal, striatal and parietal activation during a continuous spatiotemporal working memory manipulation task

Item does not contain fulltextWorking memory plays a role in various forms of psychopathology. However, working memory consists of multiple theoretical components that may be differently taxed by various specific types of task, and brain activation differences between patients and healthy controls may result from differences in task performance. This makes it difficult to interpret such results in terms of disease-related dysfunctions in affected regions or networks. The aim of the current study was to determine the brain activation related to the updating of spatiotemporal content of working memory, in such a way that performance-related confounds in future clinical studies would be minimized. Nineteen healthy volunteers performed a task involving a continuous updating process during fMRI measurement. A frontostriatal network including medial and lateral prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal cortex, premotor cortex, supplementary motor cortex, thalamus and putamen was found to be related to the updating process. The results constrain the set of brain regions plausibly related to the specific updating component of working memory. Further, the task design may be of use in future studies of pathological conditions such as schizophrenia due to the minimization of potential confounds